ON the wall of a primary school classroom somewhere in central Scotland is a large drawing of a gravestone.

It’s in loving memory of somebody called “I Can’t”. The teacher told her kids to bury Mr Can’t and they gave him a lovely send off.

Some of his relatives are still going strong. “I Will” and “I Try” are regular visitors to the classroom.

I heard this story at the weekend from another teacher, the head of a small primary school in a former mining area.

Mrs Morag Bryce of Kelloholm Primary gave one of the funniest and most uplifting speeches I’ve ever heard.

She was addressing the annual review of Girl Guiding Dumfriesshire in the Kirkconnel Miners Memorial Hall.

Her audience was made up of young girls and women who refused to say “I can’t”, because guiding is all about developing leadership and team skills.

Mrs Bryce spoke of how strangers took a sharp intake of breath when she said where she taught or where she came from – New Cumnock, another former mining town just up the road.

“You’ll have your work cut out there,” she was told

There will be hundreds of teachers in hundreds of schools across Scotland with exactly the same experience. But Mrs Bryce hates this attitude – it makes assumptions about the kids in her care, which are totally wrong.

Kelloholm and New Cumnock may be labelled “deprived”, like so many other communities that lost their industries 20 years ago.

But labelling people or places, even if the intention is to help, often causes more damage.

It can set people up to fail.

Mrs Bryce told a story about fleas – to illustrate the point.

Fleas can jump very high, several feet into the air. If you put them into a jar and cover it with cardboard, they will keep jumping madly.

But, when you eventually slide the cardboard away, a strange thing happens. The fleas don’t jump out of the jar, they act as if the lid was still there.

The same goes for children, if you stop them jumping high, they will limit themselves.

How I wish we’d had a headie like Mrs Bryce when I was at school.

Her pupils and former pupils prove they could jump as high as anyone – and often much higher.

The Upper Nithsdale Youth Pipe Band, formed in 2006, has an average age of 15 and plays to professional standard.

Two primary six girls from 1st Kelloholm guides recited Cuddle Doon, a 19th-century poem in beautiful Scots written by Alexander Anderson of Kirkconnel, a local man who worked for much of his life in the local railway and quarries.

Inspired by Burns, he wrote verse and educated himself to such a high standard that he eventually became chief librarian of Edinburgh University.

The girls, Laurie and Eilidh, were word perfect.

But this should not come as a surprise. For this south-west corner of Scotland has produced generations of high achievers from humble backgrounds.

Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, grew up in Darvel just up the road. Kirkpatrick Fleming, who gave us the bicycle, lived a few miles south.

It proves that no matter where we come from, we all have the potential to jump over the edge of the jar.

I don’t know Mrs Bryce’s politics, but it struck me that the whole of Scotland could learn her lesson.

For too long we have been told “I can’t”. We’ve been told we will not amount to much.

If you tell a child they will fail, chances are that’s what will happen. So too with countries.